#a lancer classed servant

[kiwikipedia]

Thinking about that old man again (<- is going to put him through situations)

[i-scream-for-fate]

Lancer class Dobrynya Nikitich (Summer) for the Celeb Summer Experience event in Fate Grand Order.

Illustrator: Robina.

[flyby303]

Like a fine wine… 😍😍😍

[edswordsman]

Summoned a new Lancer-Class Servant:

🩸 Vlad III! 🩸

[whimsicallywiddershins]

[fakemiya]

the versatility of emi is so underrated as a servant to be calling him weak idc about canon stats i write the rules here

[tbzrai]

does anyone actually know how to refer to ruler moriarty actually in the eng fandom. I like using wakamori bc thats one of his popular jp nicknames but apparently not everyone calls him that so it feels awkward but also typing ruler moriarty everytime feels so long

[r-18g]

i can’t include all of the classes since there are only so many poll choices available, but here are the more basic ones. ^-^

[hassiegfrieddoneanythingwrong]

Summer 9 line-up is revealed, with Classes this time (mostly). They are:

Ciel, aka Mystery Agent C.I.E.L (5 star, Moon Cancer)

Dobrynya Nikitich (4 star, Lancer)

Xu Fu (4 star, Avenger)

BB Dubai (most likely Kazuradrop in disguise) (5 star, Moon Cancer)

Tenochtitlan (4 star, Moon Cancer)

Mystery Heroine XX Alter (4 star, Foreigner)

Also, this event will be technically two months long, since it's going to be combined with OC3, a limited chapter (again?!) written by Nasu. It'll be released in three parts like Avalon, and most likely focused on the Moon Cancer Class. It'll also give out a Servant (most likely the Summer Welfare) once completed, and will be moved to Main Interlude at a later point. It's also been stated that there'll be other events going on during this time period (most likely evocation festival/interlude drops/some other campaigns).

[randomlywanderingmoth]

Part of the problem with Fate Grand Order is the core gameplay is fundamentally flawed, and it's very difficult to restore "a fun game" around a flawed core.

Quick and Buster and Arts were all interesting notions, and could have mapped into action gameplay (if we were to merge FGO's ideas with FSR's gameplay I would equate them to fast attacks, heavy attacks, and weaker attacks meant to charge your special bar, but I digress).

As it is, though, it just makes for unpleasant feelings in gameplay, demanding optimizations (I would point out that in the international release we only recently got the ability to combo all three together, and made Quick chains strong enough to consider independently). Those optimizations rise up around every aspect of the game; only a select few Servants have the ability to AoE without accessing their Noble Phantasm, and they haven't even made it to international. There's a wide range of Craft Essences, but only a few that ever matter. Creativity in builds is tamped down around increasingly narrowed build notions as the devs design with over-optimized teams in mind.

The end result is a game that, optimally, advises you to use your super rare fully powered optimized support, your friends' identically super rare fully powered optimized support, and a high power damage Servant, and repeatedly fire the damage dealer's Noble Phantasm to either clear waves or kill bosses.

Speaking of which, from a lore perspective, this is also completely messed up. By the lore of the Nasuverse, a Noble Phantasm is a Servant's super secret ultimate move, only meant for the final hour. This is fully incongruous with the gameplay, where you typically throw the same world-ending mythology-defining techniques three times in a row and call it a day. (Entertainingly, in the International release, we've also made it to Traum, where we see faceless Servants fire their Noble Phantasms like simple artillery, but that's its own commentary.)

Like, it's so effortless to imagine better systems than this! Servants deployed on a chessboard-like map, heralding back to the themes of Fate Apocrypha; suddenly we don't need anything as mechanically obtuse as Class Advantages when we could organically differentiate each Class by how they navigate the board or how they fight each other (Riders can leap over enemies like knight pieces in chess; Archers can attack at range without moving; Lancers do really well on Attack but have poor Defense; and Berserkers can be the units of terror that lore implies!)

Alternatively, the Grail Battlefronts we've already seen- rework the entire game to operate more organically like that; maybe Servants can use skills without entering combat, but it exhausts their actions. Then different forms of gameplay can exist beyond just "mulch the enemy"; like "defend this location" or "collect these resources" or "defeat This Particular Foe".

Or, even if we had to work with just the system we have! Change THAT! Rather than select three cards from a set of five, have it go down the list; each Servant gets One Action to either pick from "Quick, Buster, Arts, Use A Skill".

As for Servant Customization, walk it all the way back, all the way back up to the Attack/HP boosting. Make it so that players can individually optimize Servant performance in different ways- this Servant has better output in Arts, that Servant has higher Crit Star generation. And for folks who'd already spent their Fous, you could just say "right, so anybody with Fous spent can now allocate those points into these new Stats! No harm done!"

Of course, in order to do this, they would likely need to construct a whole new framework for their game, whilst preserving the progress people have made until now.

Then again, they are presently building castles in the sand during the rising tide with one hand and bandaging bullet wounds with the other, so maybe a long shot like that is what they need.

[kiwikipedia]

The Grand Servants are all men so that the Beasts can be ladies, except for Goetia and therefore I promise that in exchange the title of Grand Saber be handed over to Alte—

[i-scream-for-fate]

Lancer class Bhima for the Paper Moon quest chapter in Fate Grand Order.

Illustrator: pako.

[tainbocuailnge]

while im reminiscing about old fate fandom anyway, i think it's hard for anyone who got into the series through fgo or even just after fgo got big to realize just how much impact fgo had. it outright changed how people talk about the characters, before fgo it was viable and common to refer to every single servant by their class and what installment besides fsn they were from (lancer, zero lancer, extra lancer, ccc lancer) and each instalment that had multiple of a single class always provided some other option to refer to them with that would differentiate them while keeping their true name secret (red and black factions in apocrypha, red saber casko and red tea for playable extra servants, launcher for karna so liz could be ccc lancer).

fgo was an actual gamechanger because it was the first time readers were just given every servant's true name upfront and were expected to use it instead of their class. on top of that there'd been several mentions of servants that fit multiple classes before fgo but fgo was the first time we actually saw any servant summoned in an alternate class, making class names even more useless because not only did "fgo lancer" not mean anything but lancer in fgo was also a caster.

for years after fgo's release the type moon wiki clung to its page title name scheme of "[class] - fate/[whatever they're from]" because until fgo (which released 11 years after fsn) that was the most sensible and spoiler-free way to refer to servants and it took a very long list of "[class] - fate/grand order (true name)" pages for them to give up and change every servant's page title to their true name.

fgo tried to get back some of the mystery of true names with epic of remnant but they didn't manage to make it stick or really recapture that magic, and by now effectively nobody really refers to servants outside fgo by class anymore either unless they're veterans like me, and even then most of us only stick to doing it for the fsn servants. fgo has made it much harder for any fate story to write its mystery around true names anymore because out of necessity it has caused fan spaces to no longer respect the mystery of true names.

[kaibutsushidousha]

Any theories on the servant identities for the Third Fuyuki Grail War? We know Lancer, Avenger/Ruler, and Assassin for sure, only a few hints on the split in two Saber, and nothing of Archer, Rider or Caster. While I personally like to think Archer could very well be Nobunaga depending on if that one Nasu quote of no eastern servants is true or not, I have no idea who Saber could be. I've seen theories saying they could have been Ushiwaka/Yoshitsune, or even Charlemagne/Rex Magnus, but I like to think Saber was the split between Vivian and Morgan after what we learnt about PPH Morgan in LB6 but I'm curious on your thoughts

Archer, Rider, and Caster can really be anyone. There's nothing to narrow it down.

All we have is the info that Saber is a pair that can be considered two facets of the same individual (like if one of their Skills was Stars of the Chief God), one is an arguably dark counterpart (like how Castor is classed Avenger), and their Masters are the Edelfelts, a family whose symbols include twins and a zodiac constellation. It's so easy to lock into Dioscuri that I never stopped to consider any other possibility.

[versegm]

Pov you are Shirou Emiya, and you just unwittingly entered a holy grail war. The servant you summoned is a Saber class. They introduce themself as Ritsuka Fujimaru, which you are 90% sure is a random japanese name they picked, because they're walking around with Excalibur so you're fairly certain that's king Arthur, weird as it would be. (You don't know how you can just tell that the sword is Excalibur, but you know it is for certain. It calls for you, one might say.)

The first thing you learn about your servant is that they're really hard to kill. Lancer stabs them straight through the heart, and they can just walk it off. Well ok "walk it off" is a generous way to put it, because while they don't die they are very much in pain about it and holy fucking shit these screams will haunt you until the day you die.

But hey that's not your place to pry, considering the nature of the war you understand why they'd be cagey about their identity. When you ask them about their wish they tell you they're here to help a friend out, so you're pretty sure they're not evil. They look really sad when you say that to them though, for some reason.

Hanging with them is great, because they're just as averse to killing as you are! It also sucks hard dicks, because they tend to be stupidly self-sacrifical at times. The two of you argue a few times about them. It seems that you remind them of that friend they're trying to help.

Before the two of you can really resolve your issues however you get attacked by Caster. And it SUCKS. Caster tries to steal your servant. She stabs them with that weird knife of hers, and jesus FUCKING christ. The sight... the sight...... Ritsuka fizzles out, glitches out, overcome by a pain so terrible they can barely articulate coherent thoughts anymore. They lash out at her, though weirdly enough they do so with their bare hands. You initially think they're too maddened by their wounds to use their sword, but soon enough you realize they're actively trying to keep the sword out of Caster's reach.

Caster looks at Ritsuka. Then the sword. Then Ritsuka again.

"You're not the servant." She figures it out at the same time you do. "You're the noble phantasm."

[guujikaroko]

It's Star Rail x Fate collab time (well, not really, it's gonna be next year) and apparently our beloved Faker has been summoned over by standard Heroic Spirit summoning? If it really turns out to be an actual storyline within the game, it would be nice if I could clear some doubts of Star Rail fans. So I'm explaining about how Servants work here and speculating a little about the plot!

So, the Nasuverse (the world where Fate and other works by Kinoko Nasu take place) is essentially a world where magic exists. To summarize how magic works in the Nasuverse, I'd put it this way: it's a force shaped by belief.

(P.S: you'll probably see the term "Magecraft" thrown around a lot instead of "Magic". That's because Magecraft is the name of Fate's main "power system", while Magic is a different thing.)

Human belief is a very powerful thing in Fate. So powerful, in fact, that humanity itself has a collective consciousness named Alaya, which operates with the objective of "perpetuating humanity", so to speak.

Alaya responds to humanity's beliefs. When someone gains notoriety, humanity believes in them, and when their life ends, they turn into a Heroic Spirit and get engraved into something called the Throne of Heroes, a sort of database of famous figures. Those figures can be summoned by Alaya to fight for humanity in times of need and they can be historical figures, legendary heroes or even literary characters. They don't even need to be fully human in the first place.

Here is the interesting thing: Heroic Spirits can also be summoned by mages through a ritual and become something like their familiar. A mage that summons a Heroic Spirit is called a Master and their summoned Heroic Spirit is called a Servant.

The summoning process can be random (like a gacha, lmao), but you can use an object as a catalyst to summon a Heroic Spirit of your choice. The more specific to a certain figure your catalyst is, the greater the chances of summoning that figure (for example, a piece of the Round Table can summon one of its knights, and a weapon or accessory belonging to one specific knight will summon that very same knight).

Now, you might be asking what is the motive behind summoning a Heroic Spirit? There are many, from personal gain to amassing forces to save the world, but the most famous use of a Servant would be participating in the Holy Grail War.

A Holy Grail in Fate is a massive core of magical energy that can have multiple uses. It also can grant wishes, but it's so double-edged that it lost that specific value over the years, lmao. Sometimes, mages will gather in a region and organize this large-scale ritual called the Holy Grail War, where seven or so Masters each summon their own Servants to battle it out for the right to make a wish to the Holy Grail. There are variations of this model and this shit almost never goes the way anyone wants to.

[P.S: Heroic Spirits are separated by Classes on the Throne of Heroes. Originally, there were only seven (Saber, Lancer, Archer, Rider, Caster, Assassin, Berserker), but a lot more were added later. Conceptually, a Heroic Spirit is put into the Class that better represents their legend. In the game Fate/Grand Order, Classes are a Pokémon Type kind of mechanic.]

With all of that out of the way, I'd like to speculate on what is going to happen in this collab.

It seems that a Heroic Spirit has been summoned by a Nameless of the Astral Express. The description (tan, uses two swords) and the voice at the end belong to the one I'm going to call Archer (because I don't want to expose his identity shenanigans right now).

Now, let's answer the questions this left, starting by the "who". I'm betting the Master is the Trailblazer on pure vibes alone. The "how" is the tricky one: how the hell did the Trailblazer successfully perform a Servant summoning ritual, seemingly unaware at that?

Remember, Heroic Spirits can exist in this world because of human belief. And, as it may, Fate/Grand Order does have a story chapter in a world where Heroic Spirits couldn't be summoned because of a lack of belief from the population. It got resolved once people witnessed one Heroic Spirit perform an unbelievable act and began wishing for more heroes to appear. With that in mind, I wonder if they're going to work this sort of trigger into the story in Star Rail too.

Now, the more pressing matter is the "why", but that's actually easy to answer. The collab is with Fate/Stay Night, the visual novel that kickstarted it all, and the setting is a standard Holy Grail War. Which means: a Holy Grail War is happening in Star Rail and the Trailblazer might be one of the seven Masters selected to the ritual, which then led to Archer's summoning.

Yes, that might mean that other six Star Rail characters were selected to be the Masters of other six Stay Night Servants. Either that or the collab will also introduce the Stay Night Masters as well. There's also a Holy Grail on the loose somewhere, which is... Creepy as fuck? Someone get that thing dealt with, please?